Michelin Now Rates Wine. Does Wine Need It?

For more than a century, the stars meant one thing: a kitchen worth the journey. In 2026 the Michelin Guide turned its attention to the cellar with the Michelin Grape. On July 7 it published its first wine-estate rankings, for Burgundy, and on September 7 it followed with Bordeaux. Within days of the first list, a Vosne-Romanée domaine had publicly rejected its rating.

How the Michelin Grape works

The MICHELIN Grape is awarded to producers, not to individual wines or vintages. There are four tiers:

• Three Grapes: “Exceptional producers. Whatever the vintage, wine lovers can turn to the estate’s creations with complete confidence.”
• Two Grapes: excellent producers that stand out within their region for quality and consistency.
• One Grape: very good producers making wines of character, “especially in the best vintages”.
• Selected: dependable estates chosen for regular review.

Inspectors, whom Michelin describes as including former sommeliers, critics and winemakers, assess five criteria: quality of agronomy, technical mastery, identity, balance and consistency across vintages. The emphasis on consistency is the key. A Three Grape rating is a statement about reliability, not a score for a single bottle.

Burgundy: nine at the top

The Burgundy selection, published weeks before Burgundy’s earliest harvest in five centuries, named 94 estates: nine with Three Grapes, 20 with Two, 33 with One and 32 Selected. The Three Grape list:

• Côte de Nuits: Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Domaine Leroy (Vosne-Romanée), Roumier (Chambolle-Musigny), Dugat-Py (Gevrey-Chambertin), Cécile Tremblay (Morey-Saint-Denis)
• Côte de Beaune: Coche-Dury (Meursault), Domaine d’Auvenay (Saint-Romain), Jean-Marc & Thomas Bouley (Volnay), Hubert Lamy (Saint-Aubin)

Lalou Bize-Leroy is the only person behind two Three Grape estates, Leroy and d’Auvenay. The most interesting names are the least obvious ones. Cécile Tremblay, the Bouleys and Hubert Lamy are respected, but none carries the auction-room weight of DRC. Saint-Aubin and Volnay at the top table is a choice that says something about how Michelin wants to be seen. “Excellence is not defined solely by the prestige of a name,” said Gwendal Poullennec, international director of the guide, according to The Drinks Business.

The lower tiers caused more debate. Leflaive, Comtes Lafon and Bonneau du Martray received Two Grapes, Armand Rousseau and Comte Georges de Vogüé one each, according to published full lists.

Bordeaux: the first growths divided

The Bordeaux selection, presented at the Cité du Vin, also had nine Three Grape estates:

• Médoc: Château Lafite Rothschild (Pauillac), Château Léoville Las Cases (Saint-Julien), Château Montrose (Saint-Estèphe)
• Pomerol: Petrus, Château La Conseillante, Château Lafleur
• Saint-Émilion: Château Cheval Blanc, Château-Figeac
• Sauternes: Château d’Yquem

The surprises are in the Two Grape tier, which includes three first growths, Margaux, Mouton Rothschild and Haut-Brion, along with Ausone, Palmer and La Mission Haut-Brion. It is a pointed departure from the hierarchy of the 1855 Classification. Léoville Las Cases and Montrose, both second growths, rank above three first growths, as does Figeac, which was promoted to Premier Grand Cru Classé A only in 2022.

The backlash

The objections came quickly, and some were serious.

Domaine Arnoux-Lachaux, given One Grape, refused it. “We do not know how the Domaine’s rating … could have been established,” the estate wrote on social media, reported by Euronews. “Since 2020, we have deliberately chosen not to submit our wines for press reviews or ratings.”

That is the crux. A restaurant inspector eats anonymously and pays the bill. A wine inspector who wants to judge agronomy has to be invited into the vineyard. Michael Fridjhon asked in The Drinks Business whether Michelin’s tasters had assembled wines from all of the region’s producers and tasted them blind, warning that unclear methodology “risks diluting the guide’s credibility”. Lydia Coudert of Vignobles Coudert told Euronews: “The difficulty is actually how independent the tasting will be, how [anonymous] the bottles will be.”

A second objection is philosophical. Italy’s Wine Couture argued that the Burgundy list “seem[s] limited to certifying what was already known”. In a region charted by decades of specialist writing, a list headed by DRC and Leroy tells no serious collector anything new.

Santé’s view

Does wine need Michelin? The wine does not, but some drinkers will find the Michelin Grape useful.

The Grapes are of little use to the collector who already knows that Roumier is exceptional. They could matter to someone in a restaurant in Singapore, São Paulo or Seoul who knows the Michelin name but has never seen a Burghound report. A brand that can tell that drinker that a Saint-Aubin grower deserves the same trust as a Vosne-Romanée legend is doing something useful.

Rating estates rather than vintages is a reasonable choice. It rewards the producers who make good wine in difficult years, which is the most valuable thing a buyer can know. Where Michelin falls short is transparency. Until it explains who tastes, what is tasted, whether bottles are bought or supplied and how visits are arranged, the Grapes will carry the brand’s authority without its method. The restaurant stars earned their credibility through anonymity. The Grapes do not have it yet.

Using the list wisely

The best way to use the Grapes is to look past the famous names to the Two and Three Grape growers who are still within reach:

• Hubert Lamy Saint-Aubin: Three Grapes, and the clearest case for Michelin’s argument that prestige follows talent rather than address. Find it on Wine-Searcher
• Domaine Jean-Marc & Thomas Bouley Volnay: Three Grape Volnay, the Côte de Beaune’s most perfumed red village. Find it on Wine-Searcher
• Domaine Dureuil-Janthial Rully: Two Grapes, and one of two Côte Chalonnaise estates in that tier. Find it on Wine-Searcher
• Domaine Bruno Lorenzon Mercurey: the other Chalonnaise Two Grape estate. Find it on Wine-Searcher
• Château La Conseillante: Three Grape Pomerol, often more accessible than its Pomerol peers on the Three Grape list. Find it on Wine-Searcher

Treat Michelin like any other critic: as one voice among several, most useful where it disagrees with the others.